Healing happens when you are relaxed and open to the beneficial, life-enhancing flow of energies all around and within you. While going to a healer is a very sensible step when you need extra help, every day there are healing boosts that can make a difference. Here are five of the best.

1 Put a few simple flowers on your window sill or table, like this single cornflower and strands of tamarisk. Seeing small moments of beauty can open heart, mind and spirit.

2. Love and accept yourself, just as you are. Practise this frequently until it feels easy (even if that takes a lifetime).

3. When you catch yourself with negative self-talk, think of three nice things to say about yourself. Your energy will begin to grow and flow.

4. Meditate. Even five minutes a day can make all the difference. Sit still in silence, deliberately, and open up to the timeless presence of this moment now.

5. Prepare a simple meal – as simple as you like – in a spirit of loving kindness to yourself, and gratitude to all who played a part in getting the ingredients to your table. Eat it slowly, as though eating for the first time. Notice the textures, the flavours, and the sensations within your body as the life-enhancing food enters you.

Meditating with beads is an ancient practice that spans many cultures. It’s particularly suited to current times because it releases us from technology. Apps and timers can be good meditation companions, but this is altogether a simpler method.

In this post, I’ll describe some of the basic types of meditation beads available, show you how to make the simple example above, and then show you a wonderful meditation practice.

The ready-made option

There are many ready made items out there, which come at a price. Mala beads usually feature 108 beads, made from wood, seeds, ceramics or stone, sometimes with spacers. ‘Mala’ is an old Sanscrit word for ‘garland’. This one, bought from a Tibetan shop many years ago, is made from bodhi seeds from the same type of tree that the Buddha is said to have sat under when he experienced enlightenment.

Other meditation strings are much smaller. Twenty one beads is a common number, just the right size to wear around a wrist on an elasticated thread. This one, below, from thechakrastack, is made from fossilised wood. It features 20 beads, with additional metal beads as spacers.

How to make your own

It can be a meditation in itself to string your own beads. It’s also very inexpensive. You can source wooden beads, often made from furniture off-cuts, at many bead shops online. Look for sustainable sources.

The 21-bead string shown at the top of this post could be worn as a loose bracelet, but is designed primarily to be held during meditation. To make it, you will need the following:

Method:

Dip the ends of your cotton thread into the pvc glue. Squeeze the ends between your fingers and allow to dry. (This hardens the ends and makes it easier to thread the beads.)

Thread 1 peace jade bead, then 9 wooden beads.

Repeat.

Finally, thread 1 peace jade bead.

Tie your strings securely together, as close to the beads as you can. The ideal is to end up with a bead bracelet that has just a small amount of movement possible between the beads. Cut off excess thread leaving around 3 cm.

How to meditate with your beads

Simply hold one bead between two fingers, breathe in and out at a leisurely pace, focusing on your breath, then move on to the next bead and repeat.

During the breath, it works well to focus on a particular word of your choice. The idea is that the word, or words you choose become seed thoughts, spreading their energy into every corner of your life.

With many meditations, it is recommended that you sit in a particular place, at a particular time. Here, I’m sharing a different method, that can help you create a happy day, and a peaceful night.

Morning seed word meditation

When you wake, sit up in bed, and hold your meditation beads. Think of two words that you would like to have permeating through your day. You might choose ‘love’ and ‘peace’, for example; or ‘simplicity’ and ‘joy’; or ‘abundance’ and ‘sharing’. For this demonstration, we’ll choose ‘love’ and ‘peace’.

Now, starting at the string ends, move your fingers onto one of the peace jade beads. Breathe in ‘love’ by saying it silently to yourself on the in-breath. Breathe out ‘peace’ by saying it silently to yourself on the out-breath. Move your fingers to the next beads, and repeat. Keep repeating until you have completed the circle and reached the threads once more. Then put your beads to one side, and get on with your day. Be aware of the energies of love and peace recurring throughout your day.

Evening seed word meditation

At night time, sit up in bed, and hold your meditation beads. Reflect on your day with a sense of love, gratitude and peace. Choose two words that will help you let go of the day. You might choose ‘love’ and ‘thank you’; or ‘gift’ and ‘rest’; or ‘serenity’ and ‘peace’. Then meditate with your beads, as in the morning seed word meditation above. Put your beads down by your bed, and rest.

At the beginning of this year I set myself a challenge: get some poetry accepted for publication. Today, that dream has come true. The Poetic Bond VII, an anthology edited by Trevor Maynard, features work by 50 poets from 11 countries. Together, they create a vivid snapshot of now. My three poems are set in England, New Zealand, and infinity. They feature love, loneliness and yes, there are dragons. Quite a lot of dragons. But they are the beautiful, good-to-have-around sort. They’re worth getting to know!

The idea to meditate on the word ‘serene’ arrived on its own and stayed by my side until I noticed it. At the time I was packing for a week’s holiday in Greece, so I decided to take the word with me and meditate on it daily.

Day 1. I dent the car

My daughter and wake up in the hotel at Gatwick Airport. I fit in a hasty ten-minute meditation “I am… serene” before heading off to the South Terminal. There we queue to check in our one item of luggage that won’t fit into our cabin bags: daughter’s emerald green mermaid tail complete with mono-fin.

We board a plane for Preveza, Greece. The plan is to hire a car on arrival, drive to our villa in a remote part of Lefkada, then drive down to the nearest village in the evening to pick up my partner, daughter’s dad, who is arriving by taxi from a later plane.

However, I am not used to driving on these narrow winding island roads. I am not used to left-hand drive. There are more steep hills and dirt tracks than I was expecting. We make a few wrong turns. We get to the villa more or less in one piece. But later, during the trip to collect partner, I take a wrong turn into the village and dent the front right edge of the car against a brick wall. A calm local man materialises from the darkness and directs me along the impossibly narrow street. I locate partner. Serene? Massive fail.

Day 2. The villa is awesome

The villa has an infinity pool overlooking the Ionian Sea, and its own yoga and meditation room. Twenty minutes of a daily blend of qigong and yoga which I call my ‘Stretches’, followed by 20 minutes meditating on ‘Serene’. During the silent sitting time, I witness the feelings of embarrassment about the car give way to blissful memories from childhood.

Later in the morning I bathe naked in the pool and feel weightless, suspended between blue sea and blue sky. In the evening the poor battered car is swapped for a bump-free one, and we are told there should be no charges, as we were fully insured. Serene? Getting there.

Day 3. Noting the thoughts that ruffle

Consider more naked bathing but decide to do stretches and meditation first. While breathing in ‘I am’ and breathing out ‘serene’, I hear the pool man arrive. Partner chats to pool man. Feel relieved that focusing on ‘Serene’ has saved me from embarrassing nude encounter with pool man. Later, swim naked in freshly cleaned pool, mind and body both happy and relaxed.

Then I receive a message: would I be willing to talk to a national newspaper about my experience as a mother whose child has been in critical care several times? Old memories rise up to ruffle my serene surface.

Day 4. Every distraction has an emotional charge

I receive a different message, this time from a womanwho briefly attended a Meditation Group that I run. She is an expat, living on this island now. Distracting thoughts rise up: what would it be like to live here? I wonder if we might meet up…

Stretches. Meditation. With each breath, I mentally write “I am…serene” in white gold letters against an azure Ionian sky. I notice the perturbations from the distracted thoughts. I could put my phone away for the week, but I need it, quite simply, in case my disabled son in England needs me. In any case, serenity is not about avoiding the real world. It’s about remaining calm amid the distractions.

Later. The expat hasn’t got time to see us; journalist doesn’t contact me. The ripples of distraction fade away. I am happy to live awhile in this hillside space where pool flows into sea and sky. This is all that has ever been and all that ever will be. All time is eternally present here, captured between the pink sunrise and the terracotta moonrise. Fragrance of sage, lavender and rosemary. Gentle musical chimes of goat bells in the hillside scrub. Green crickets like oversized gemstones adorn the walls of the villa. And I experience a tendency to think only good of people – a sign of decreased stress?

Day 5. Breakthrough

I wake with familiar niggles of remorse: so many things in the last week or more that I could have done better. I witness these emotional niggles as though they are brief, transient perturbations in the air, and watch them dissolve before they reach the ground.

Stretches. Meditation. I am floating in the now familiar azure blue space. I witness the energy of serenity as a wide, slowly sweeping wave of peace and surrender. I witness, as if in a movie, how I hold on to things and people in an attempt to control outcomes. I witness myself releasing this need. I see gateways opening into infinite possibilities. I taste freedom.

A local tells us the story of a family who stayed here for two weeks and scarcely went out because they feared the over-sized green and brown crickets.

These bugs… do they sometimes reflect our own inner thoughts that can bug us? They live in a boundary place of our perceptions. We can choose to see them as objects of fear and revulsion. Or we can choose to see them as miracles of nature’s engineering and honour these scraps of life.

Later, a cricket comes to study my notes for this post. Impossible to feel dislike or fear when it is simply being itself.
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Day 6. Understanding

I wake with a shaft of anger leaving me. So quick, it’s gone before I fully register it. Who knows what it signified?

As I drift between sleep and wakefulness, the voice of an indigenous Australian woman I once met says, “It’s time to adopt your true home.” A strange oxymoron, I think, as a true home surely doesn’t need adopting. Perhaps that voice from the Dreaming simply refers to home as a state of mind?

It occurs to me that the rainbow of emotions is part of being human. A serene mind is comfortable with them all.
Stretches, meditation. Today the silent time is full of images of flow.
Serenity, I see, cannot exist in an unmoving state. It would become stagnant and lose its very nature.
When we are serene we allow our emotions to flow: to be acknowledged, and acted on appropriately when needed.

The desire to hold on to any emotion is an attempt to halt the flow of life. It is an impossible task that simply creates pain in the body and mind. If an emotion endures it is because it is born again in every moment of time. We live in the flow.

Day 7. Free from distractions (nearly)

I wake at dawn and walk through rocky, sparse gardens. Even this early, the bees are crowding around dainty pink flowers and dusty lavender spikes. The air is humid as the sea gives up some of its reserves.

I place a clear quartz crystal in a bowl of spring water on the highest rock and watch it shine in the light of the rising sun, a lens capturing the magic of the new day.

Stretches. Meditation. I listen to my breathing and hear the words that I’m focusing on within the sound of each breath: “I am… serene.”

And for uncounted moments it becomes true. I am part of the air: weightless, drifting. Pure consciousness. Here and everywhere. Nothing has an emotional charge. It simply is.

Day 8. Homecoming

Pack. Tidy. Leave.

In the airport I fit in 15 minutes of meditation amid the noise of passengers waiting for their flights. On the flight home I ponder on this week of ‘Serene’. What effect has it had on me?

It has helped me become aware of the countless emotions that are present in any day.

I have learnt to be much less attached to these emotions, allowing them to flow, and go.

Curiously, during this week I have not had a single insect bite. Not one. This is highly unusual for me. There could be several reasons. However, it seems that while my mind has been less ‘bugged’ by thoughts, my body has been unbothered by them too.

And in the lightest of ways, ‘serene’ has become a new favourite word to meditate upon.

Understanding blends knowledge with kindness. When you apply understanding to a relationship, conflicts crumble. Dynamics alter. Ego gives way to empathy.

An understanding person comprehends something or someone with compassion. They hold a cup of knowledge that contains kindness and love as well as wisdom and perception.

Understanding can strengthen a floundering relationship. If a partnership is ending, it can enable that to happen with love rather than anger. Understanding can also be a wonderful doorway to laughter and humour which in themselves can heal relationships.